摘要：How do financial markets affect income growth? A prominent hypothesis has it
that well working capital markets contribute to aggregate productivity growth by
making sure that capital is allocated to the sectors where it is most productive
(e.g. Bagehot,1873; Schumpeter, 1911).We examine this conjecture, building on
an influential two-step empirical approach suggested by Wurgler (2000).The first
step consists of the estimation of intersectoral investment responsiveness param-
eters for a wide sample of countries. Intuitively, the estimated country-level param-
eters measure to what extent sectoral investment growth is aligned with sectoral
output growth. The second step examines whether intersectoral investment
responsiveness is greater in countries with higher levels of financial development.
Our main empirical finding is that there is a strong positive effect of financial
development on the intersectoral investment responsiveness, and that this effect
is robust to controlling for economic and institutional development.
